Human & Machine

“Don’t you think you have enough technology in your room? Your room looks like it’s out of some kind of techno future story.”

“What makes you think that?”

I look over to the nearest pile of metal and grab the first thing that I see spearing out of it. I can’t even tell what it is at first glance; it just looks like some kind of flat piece of cheap metal with a few wires dangling out from the bottom of it. I shake it around in my hand to see if it activates when shaken, but it doesn’t react, “Like this. What the hell is this? It looks like nothing but unnecessary trash.”

Jacob glances back at me for a moment before he focuses back at his computer monitor, “That’s not trash. That’s the scraps pile for my synchro.”

“All you do is talk about that ‘synchro’ surgery you got months ago,” I say as I kick electronics out of the way. His floors have been blocked by wiring for so long that I completely forgot that he had peach colored tiling. “Just because you’re part mechanical now, that doesn’t excuse you from having a messy room. You need to clear out some of this stuff, now!”

Jacob throws his head back and lets out a long, drawn out sigh. Ever since he got those new lung implants, every time he lets out a breath, a white vapor spews out. The sigh let out a thick cloud, barely making his face visible for a few seconds until it dissipated.

“If you’re going to use that new venting system you have, please do it by a window, okay? It could confuse the fire alarms and I don’t want that happening.”

“Alright, alright. I’ll try to keep it to a minimum.”

“Thank you.”

Pausing whatever he was doing at his computer desk, Jacob scoots back and gets up turning around to start clearing the piles around his room. His bare chest is exposed, metal plates and all. As he’s moving around, I start to lose focus, thinking that the sound of clanging metal is coming from him instead of the junk he’s piling to throw away.

“Hey, Jacob?”

“Yeah, Mom?”

“Your new implants… they don’t hurt, right?”

“No, not really. My chest feels a bit colder during the winter season because of all the metal in me, but that’s about it. Why?”

I slowly shake my head to reassure him, “It’s nothing. Just wanted to make sure you’re okay. What did the doctors call your implants again?”

“Synchros. They’re mechanical replacements for organs that run on the electric activity from my brain instead of needing blood. As long as my brain is fine, my metal lungs keep going. Pretty much makes me immune to lung cancer if I ever decided to start smoking.”